The season premiere of "Frontline/World" (WGBY, Channel 57, 9 p.m.; CPTV, 10 p.m.) takes a fascinating journey inside the Taliban and an Al-Qaida insurgent group. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi realizes he may have to pay for his story with his life, but he travels deep into northern Afghanistan anyway. Later, "Behind the Rainbow" on "Independent Lens" (WGBY, 10 p.m.; CPTV, 11 p.m.) is a straight-ahead report on the in-fighting that has marked the African National Congress since it became the ruling party after the release from jail 20 years ago of Nelson Mandela.

By EDMUND H. MAHONY, emahony@courant.com and The Hartford Courant, July 16, 2014

NEW HAVEN — A British engineer who U.S. prosecutors claim pioneered the use of the Internet as a support system for terrorists in Europe and the Middle East was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison Wednesday but could be free in months because of time served and other considerations. U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall sentenced Babar Ahmad, 40, who pleaded guilty last year to charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. She gave Ahmad credit for the 10 years he has been held while fighting extradition to the U.S. and awaiting sentencing.

As a German immigrant and now proud American, I want to comment on Gerhard Austin's letter "Are Americans Really Worried About aFreed Taliban?" [June 10]. I think armies fighting on one hand and terrorists killing innocent civilians on the other are two situations that can't be compared. To even think that Americans are scared stiff shows a complete lack of understanding of the American character. Americans don't get scared! Manfred Trautner, West Hartford

Yar Kohsar wanted to join Saturday night's candlelight vigil outside his Wethersfield apartment complex in honor of World Trade Center terrorist victims. Instead, the Afghanistan native and retired professor watched from his third-floor window. "How could I participate? I go out and people look at me with shifting eyes and a crazy look. My telephone is ringing and when I pick it up, they hang up," Kohsar said. Kohsar and other Afghans in Connecticut know there is more to their country than jihad.

WHO ARE tHEY? The Taliban, which means "Students of Islam," is a religious army that emerged in 1994, pledging to bring peace to Afghanistan after years of civil war. WHAT IS ISLAM? The religion of Islam, which was founded by Muhammad, emphasizes the submission to Allah and final reward and punishment. It is the predominant religion in much of Asia. WHAT DO THEY CONTROL? Taliban soldiers bombed Mazar-e-Sharif, the last major Afghan city outside their control, earlier this month and claimed they had captured it. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?

We have almost as many questions about the word "Taliban" as we do about the regime it denotes: What's the derivation of "Taliban"? Should "Taliban" always be preceded by "the"? Should we say "the Taliban is" or "the Taliban are"? Ahmed Rashid's authoritative and fascinating book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (Yale, $14.95) provides some answers. During the early 1990s, Afghanistan was a bubbling cauldron of hatred, chaos and destruction as warlords battled fiercely for their fiefdoms.

By now, the story of the former Taliban spokesman enrolled at Yale, the one who's been branded "the Ivy League Terrorist" and compared to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, has been told many times. But on another college campus in a different Connecticut city, there was another Afghan student, one who didn't make headlines or inflame talk radio audiences around the nation. His name is Arian Sharifi and he came to Wesleyan University after spending time in a Taliban prison. A sincere young man of 26 with closely cropped hair and a forceful gaze, Sharifi, who received his bachelor's degree on Sunday, doesn't really like to talk about the day the Taliban came to his family's house in Kabul.

Of the many cooking competitions on TV now -- there are at least three this summer -- "Hell's Kitchen" (Fox, 9 p.m.), back for its third season, remains the most fearsome. Its barking host, Gordon Ramsay, is so formidable, candidates quake, cry and faint, which doesn't help their cooking. Customers hoping to be served by the dozen hopefuls would do well to be patient and pack snacks. The first night's service doesn't go so well. Not all British foodies are so high-strung. A new weekday series of food shows on BBC America includes Antony Worrall Thompson on "Daily Cooks" (noon)

As a former ambassador for the Taliban, Rahmatullah Hashemi was a spokesman for a hated regime. He's now a freshman at Yale University and depending on your politics, he is either a symbol of what Yale is doing right, in trying to build bridges to the Muslim world, or he's proof that the nation's elite universities have taken diversity too far. Two weeks ago, Rahmatullah appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, in a long narrative...

President Obama's handling of the Bergdahl prisoner exchange was enough reason for his impeachment. For him to send mercenaries such as Blackwater to Quatar to shoot down the terrorists would not add to his dilemma. Mr. President, please give it a try. Klaus Guttmann, Rocky Hill

A recent visitor from Germany posed a relevant question. As he watched the reports on American heroism on D-Day, the implications of the concurrent Bergdahl debate struck him as puzzling. Are Americans who fought thousands of well-trained German soldiers in 1944 afraid of five miserable old Taliban prisoners released from Guantanamo? His observation: "Certain sentences I heard on Fox News allow the conclusion that Americans are scared stiff if five additional Taliban start fighting them again.

After all of these years, we couldn't figure out how to prosecute five Taliban leaders, so we trade them for a U.S. Army sergeant (regardless of his actions). In order to make it more politically palatable we call them low-level players (ignoring the effort to capture and keep them). High fives all around for bringing back one of ours. If these Taliban leaders had not been in custody and instead had been located in an SUV in Afghanistan, we would have called in a Predator done and killed them all with a missile strike.

President Obama spoke at the University of Hartford on April 8, renewing his call for stricter gun control laws following the massacre at Sandy Hook Eelementary School last December. One cannot but support him in this effort. But he will be seen, especially by the rest of the world, as duplicitous if he does not also stop the drone and warplane attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen that have killed hundreds of innocent people, including children and women. Just Saturday, a U.S. aircraft deployed under NATO's command killed 10 children in Afghanistan [April 8, news, "Afghans: Airstrike Killed Civilians"]

It is a miracle when, against all odds, brutality and terror do not snuff out the human spirit. Just such a marvel is embodied in the 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who spoke clearly this week from Britain, where she and her family now live. She is still recovering from an assassination attempt in October, when a member of the Taliban boarded a school bus near her home in Pakistan and shot her in the head. The Taliban tried to kill Malala because for several years, with the support of her father, she spoke out on behalf of the right of girls to be educated.

By SUSAN DUNNE, sdunne@courant.com and The Hartford Courant, January 29, 2013

Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main St. in Hartford, on Thursday, Jan. 31, will present a one-time-only screening of a drama from Afghanistan, with the director in attendance. "The Black Tulip " is about a Kabul family that, after the Taliban is expelled from the country, opens a restaurant that hosts open-mike nights. The family is harassed by Taliban supporters who don't approve of free speech, or those who encourage it. Sonia Nassery Cole directed the movie and also plays the female lead.

THE HUNT FOR BIN LADEN: ON THE GROUND WITH THE SPECIAL FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN By Robin Moore, Random House; 370 pp., $24.95 One of the comments George Bush made in the wake of 9/11 -- and there were many -- was that America was going to find terrorists wherever they hid and "smoke 'em out." In his timely new book "The Hunt for Bin Laden," veteran journalist Robin Moore, who arrived in Afghanistan in December 2001, reveals that the long arm of our fumigator-in-chief was the Green Berets.

By SUSAN DUNNE, sdunne@courant.com and The Hartford Courant, July 24, 2012

A drama about a family in Afghanistan trying to get out from under the thumb of the Taliban will be shown this week at the Mark Twain House & Museum. "The Black Tulip" tells the story of the Mansouri family, who take advantage of the Taliban's ouster from the country by opening a restaurant in Kabul and holding open mike nights. But even though the Taliban is gone, many still sympathize with them, and those people disapprove of the Mansouri's encouragement of free speech. The 2010 film will be shown at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 27 at the landmark house at 351 Farmington Ave. in Hartford, which has a deal with the Connecticut Film Festival to periodically show some of its outstanding selections.

By SUSAN DUNNE, sdunne@courant.com and The Hartford Courant, July 24, 2012

A drama about a family in Afghanistan trying to get out from under the thumb of the Taliban will be shown this week at the Mark Twain House & Museum. "The Black Tulip" tells the story of the Mansouri family, who take advantage of the Taliban's ouster from the country by opening a restaurant in Kabul and holding open mike nights. But even though the Taliban is gone, many still sympathize with them, and those people disapprove of the Mansouri's encouragement of free speech. The 2010 film will be shown at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 27 at the landmark house at 351 Farmington Ave. in Hartford, which has a deal with the Connecticut Film Festival to periodically show some of its outstanding selections.

By DENISE BUFFA, dbuffa@courant.com and The Hartford Courant, July 4, 2012

The paths of two Connecticut men — one a state trooper, the other a businessman — would have likely never crossed had it not been for the Army Reserve. But when the two men met and traveled from the United States to Afghanistan, their survival depended on trusting each other. The trooper, Scott Meyer, and the businessman, Timothy Christensen, are highly trained majors who served from October 2011 to April 2012 as part of the first Army Railroad Advisory Team in Afghanistan.